Experian Connects Responses To Online Ads Across Media

Experian Marketing Services soon will begin rolling out a tool that connects the digital advertisements that consumers see to their purchases by integrating several types of offline and online data, along with a host of triggers and metrics.

The tool focuses on paid attribution channels, and is the latest in a series of services focused on helping marketers track where to spend their marketing budgets. It adds to features like dynamic data analysis and deeper segmentation. Jeff Hassemer, VP of product strategy at Experian Marketing Services, said to expect what he calls "process intelligence" next.

Response attribution, the latest tool, allows brands to set up an index that determines the value of one media channel over another to give clients more control on allocating budget across display, email, mobile, search, video and other media supported by real-time bidding. Metrics often include the lifetime value of a customer. All responses have a shelf life. Marketers may give a higher score to searches that occur within three hours or emails opened within three days, depending on the client data. The attribution metrics per media channel help to set the budget.

It also calculates the type of response per media channel, including the date, time and type such as a completed form to register for something, coupon redemption, or purchase transaction.

The system also identifies whether the consumer purchased the product promoted, and correlates what the brand offered online with the items the consumer purchased. "If I see an online promotion for a blue shirt, but go into the store and buy a pair of red pants, that promotion may have had some pull, but not the same amount of pull as if I went in the store to buy the blue shirt," Hassemer said.

Linking the ad with the response is important because it tells the brand whether the same person who viewed a specific ad purchased the promotional product. It correlates the marketing activity with the consumer's response, such as buying a shirt or a skirt, taking into account the metrics or values that the brand input into the system to attribute the media across channels.

Experian's system generates much of the data, but it also comes from promotional history, Web transactions, and customer data. The data feeds from multiple data sources like purchase transactions from ecommerce systems and point-of-sale systems in retail stores are combined and sorted. The latest features also connect data from offline transactions with prior online transactions.

About 60% of Experian Marketing Services clients come from the retail industry, with the remainder mostly in financial services, publishing, and hospitality.

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